Fuerza Volleyball Club Hosts Clinic in District 2

Joseph Morales

GRIN Intern

On July 12, the Fuerza Volleyball Club held a summer clinic at the District 2-Hashan Kek service center.

Marion Malino founded the club along with his two daughters. It is a non-profit organization with volunteer coaches. The volleyball club recently restarted two years ago in 2022, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused the club to take a hiatus.

Coach Malino stated, “We recently started back up again two years ago; before that, we stopped because of COVID, and recently, we just got the urge to start back up again.” Since its return, the club has shown consistent growth.

Three teams were created when the Furerza Volleyball Club was first established two years ago. However, since then, they have added two more teams, making it a total of five youth teams for their club. Malino stated, “We have long club seasons, but it’s good to show the girls different teams across the state and to have them travel more.”

The clinic in District 2 was really built on the idea of showcasing these opportunities to the Gila River Indian Community girls’ youth. The agenda was filled from the morning until late afternoon. It started with a light warm-up and stretching session for the girls before getting into basic drills.

Cherish Napelee of District 3 - Sacaton just finished her first year with the club and was one of the players on the 18’s team helping in the clinic. She first touched on her experience with the club; she stated, “The experience has been really good; I got to travel a lot. I went to Hawaii and tried something different because it’s mainly basketball out here.” I asked her about the importance of having a clinic like this in the Community, and she stated, “The clinic is really cool; we get to show the girls something different and show them things outside the community.”

The clinic had many youths show up and take part. The club expected a rough estimate of around 32-38 girls to show up. It allowed them to showcase something new for girls interested in volleyball and ended with a t-shirt giveaway for all who participated.

Any girls interested in the upcoming club season can reach out directly on Instagram at fuerzavolleyball.